


The Eve of Epiphany, or, What She Will

by chainofclovers



Category: Twelfth Night (National Theatre 2017), Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: A concierge arranged, and Malvolia knew how to do that.





	1. Malvolia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/gifts).



> Scribe, I hope you enjoy this story; it was a pleasure to write. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Many, many thanks to my three (!) marvelous beta readers. ~~Once the Yuletide collection goes off anonymous, I'll thank you by name. In the meantime, just know I couldn't have written this without you.~~ Ellydash, Telanu, and Bristler--you are amazing and I'm so grateful for your thoughtful ideas, edits, and support.
> 
> Finally, #sorrynotsorry apologies--and mad props!--to Shakespeare!
> 
> \---
> 
> " _Not because, some days—yes—I wished for it but chose a different_  
>        _courage. I stopped asking the mirror_
> 
> _for a dream and opening it like a door. I wished to welcome back_  
>       _feeling, that whole mansion of trembling_
> 
> _rooms, wished to break every window, let the light storm through._  
>       _On my knees I wished for tempest,_
> 
> _for rack and screw. I asked for churchless pleasures to disturb my_  
>       _numb comfort, wanted lick and wallow…_ "
> 
> —from “Dearest Thanatos,” by Traci Brimhall

A concierge arranged, and Malvolia knew how to do that.

She liked her desk at the inn, with the town map and the larger map of the Kingdom of Thrace spread across one side. She liked how she barely needed to glance at it to give directions to the guests of the Antler & Arms. She liked her desk’s neat stacks of business cards advertising local restaurants and wineries. She liked being the person who made the perfect recommendations, negotiated dinner reservations, kept subtle track of who arrived where, when, and with whom. She liked the rotating cast of characters—no one ever stuck around that long, with the Antler & Arms nothing more than a decent inn in a small town, a place to break up the journey between Illyria and eastern Thrace. 

Malvolia liked to be a bit impressive, with her close-cropped blonde hair, the men’s suit. She liked to dress as herself, liked the way some men turned down the corners of their mouths in appreciative acquiescence: she had a right to the suit, no denying that. She liked the way some women looked once, then twice. Liked their quiet little smiles. There was no one around to remember the bobbed wig and the shapeless black dress of her steward days. No one around to remember the other clothes, either, the ones she thought about every time she saw a daffodil or a yellow kerchief or mustard sauce. 

She liked to arrive at work in the morning, neaten the corners of everything, sit down in her hard-backed chair and arrange herself at her desk as she had arranged her desk before her. She liked the right angles and morning light. She especially liked it now that she’d been there for awhile, now that there was, for the first time in her life, a real contrast between her workplace and the way she spent her nights. Malvolia spent most nights with women: their soft bodies, their sweetness, their sweat and heat and spit. Malvolia knew how to make a woman scream, and she knew too how to make a woman whisper and plead. She hadn’t always known, of course. In Illyria, Malvolia had lived for only one woman. She’d lived in hope, not probability, and then was tricked into believing her hopes were possible. But in Thrace, exiled from those old possibilities—impossibilities, as they turned out—she studied sex as one might study trigonometry or gardening or baking. She read erotic texts, appalling but instructional. Though it made her almost angry, she practiced on herself. After all, unclothed in her bed, her own shape was the recognizable shape of a woman. 

When it was time to branch outward, time to prove she had what another woman might want, she forced herself not to hesitate. No more working all the time and calling it a silent love, as she had on her previous estate. No, there were divisions between day and night for a reason. And in sex, in taking charge of another’s pleasure, she even started to relish a certain kind of darkness, the warm shadowy kind that filled her—filled the whole room—when she loved a woman. (Fucked a woman, that is, though love, improbable and distant, sounded more polite.) It was a darkness she controlled. She closed the curtains, she snuffed the candles, she did most of the talking, most of the touching. She found her own way in. 

Despite the study and preparation, the first time it happened was a revelation. Malvolia hadn’t known what was going to happen that first evening with a woman, hadn’t known it would happen that evening at all. She’d wanted to make her own connection with some of the bars and restaurants who advertised with the Antler & Arms, wanted to be sure her recommendations were sound. She started with a bar just round the corner from work, stopped in after her shift for a club soda and some quiet observation. 

“You’re the new concierge, aren’t you,” the barmaid said when she dropped off the soda. Not a question. She was the only one working as far as the eye could see. A bit of a jack-of-all-trades where the bar business was concerned. 

“I am,” Malvolia said. The recognition pleased her, but she kept her voice cool. “We send a fair bit of business your way, don’t we.” 

“You do.” The woman smiled, darted quickly to the back room, and emerged with an uncorked bottle of red. “On the house,” she said, “as a token of thanks.”

“I don’t drink,” Malvolia said. The woman’s eyebrows raised, though she shouldn’t have been surprised—though Malvolia wasn’t an addict, an entire code rested behind the choice to drink club soda.

The barmaid coughed politely. Another code?

“How about dinner instead,” Malvolia said. “Next evening you’re free?” Self-shock ran through her as she waited for a response. She’d shocked herself like this once before, had performed with the biggest yes of all in her mind, all her hopes taken flight on the “proof” Olivia (she whispered the name in her mind) wanted her. It had ended so badly. But back then Malvolia thought she was answering a question, and this time she was the asker. There was hardly a wait and hardly anything to lose. And it worked this time, so many miles away from where she’d been.

Floodgates and all that. As it turned out. 

Malvolia’s sobriety was a novelty to the barmaids and sommeliers and waitresses she slept with those first months in Thrace. In the early days, she shook with nerves despite her readings, despite her practice, but the nervousness endeared her to her lovers. And in a drunken industry, her sobriety made waves—Malvolia didn’t fumble sloppily or pass out in bed. She listened. She learned. She could be counted on—not to throw up in bed or pass out as soon as the sex was over, yes, but for more than that, too: she could be counted on to travel a body with intention and purpose and to give that body what she discovered it wanted. 

She was as proud of those discoveries as an explorer charting new territories and prouder still of her self-control. She liked to touch a woman to lovedrunk limpness, turn down the sleepy offers of reciprocation, leave her before morning. The gossip circuit was no cause for concern, nor the trail of hurt feelings. Malvolia didn’t kiss and tell; her women turned the crank of their own rumor mill just fine. Even that first night with the first barmaid, Malvolia’s skin prickling with desire—the rush of so many yeses—she made it home before she let herself feel anything but a focus on a job well done. She had no room for further embarrassment: she would succeed in loving women. She would give them what they wanted, and none of the rumors would include so much as a whisper in critique of her skill, and she—adored, finally, but not loving—would remain largely untouched. This was the success she planned for from the night she left Illyria, fueled by humiliation-turned-rage. Revenge by competency, revenge by received desire. Just as she wanted.

-

Two days before Epiphany, the innkeeper Destino approached Malvolia’s desk. Her heart sank. He’d want her to set up a free wine-tasting this Saturday, or he’d want her to start doing some light housekeeping, and she’d have to decide if her word was as good as the boundaries inside her head.

“I forgot to tell you,” Destino began, then appeared to get distracted by Malvolia’s hair or something just beyond her. He could never get over Malvolia’s looks; his interest wasn’t complimentary. 

Her heart sank further still. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow night—you’ll stay for our Twelfth Night celebration. All the day staff stays, of course. It’s only fitting.” 

Ironic, Malvolia thought, to attend a Twelfth Night celebration on the boss’s orders. What if she had a date? But she didn’t have anything scheduled. Everyone would celebrate the holiday tomorrow. She knew it and had tried to put it out of her mind. 

Destino nudged her shoulder as he slipped past to return to his office, where he did Jove knew what all day. “Who knows, Malvolia—maybe you’ll find the pea in the Twelfth Night cake. You’d like to be queen for the night, wouldn’t you?”

“I would not,” Malvolia said.

Destino smiled at the modesty he perceived in her tone.

-

Malvolia slept fitfully that night. She dreamt of Illyria, of the stacked illusions that made up her days there. She walked Olivia through the household ledgers, a task she’d done in reality many times over, except this time her calculations were all wrong, and she struggled to correct the figures as they went. Her dream self had the hard edges back, her draped black profile somehow visible to herself even though she was herself. In the dream as in her history, she was the surface she’d organized into precision. She woke up foggy and happy to be alone.


	2. Olivia

Although her husband Sebastian didn’t understand why, Olivia liked to cast aside her title when she traveled. A countess would get better treatment, but on the rare occasions Olivia traveled she felt unlanded, and an unlanded woman could almost go where she wanted to go. The clothes didn’t make the woman, but Olivia’s clothes wrote all her tickets: pure black to mourn, and pieced-together colors to woo (alas), and now, as unlanded traveler, she donned something a bit drapey, a bit beige. It was a wifely outfit, and it was funny, damn it, because she wasn’t wifely at all. 

“Good for you,” Maria said the day before they left for Thrace. She winked—not as blatantly as she might have before, but the expression was there and said it all: _Live a little. Have a saucy hotel tryst with your sexy husband. Try to have some fun._

She knew rather more about Olivia’s troubles than Olivia would have liked her to. Even if Maria’s just-between-us-girls chatter suggested Olivia needed nothing more than a good honeymoon-ish bedding, deep down Maria was much smarter than that. Somehow, though she did not sleep so near Olivia since her marriage to Toby, Maria seemed aware of all the sex and fun that Olivia and Sebastian weren’t having. Olivia would have told her to mind her own business, that she’d meddled quite enough already, but Maria was her aunt by marriage now, and there was enough to adjust to without rubbing Maria’s face in her crimes against Malvolia. Crimes against the household, really, now that the ledgers were in shambles, Olivia too guilty and low to find a suitable replacement. 

And Olivia could hardly count on her still-new husband to take charge even if she’d wanted him to. Sebastian—heartsick for Messaline, guilty for the past, devoted to family in a way Olivia could only be in memories of her younger self—preferred to spend evenings dining with his sister and her husband. Olivia was invited, always, but she found herself relying on easy excuses and staying home more and more frequently. Sebastian believed Olivia wanted to avoid more awkward exchanges with Orsino, who’d pined for Olivia for months, but that wasn’t it. Olivia used to think it would help to see Cesario as Viola, to see him as the woman she was. But even in a gown, smiling cow-eyed at Orsino and playing at serving dinner despite the dozen servants buzzing around her, Viola was the same person she’d always been. And Sebastian, for all the siblings’ uncanny twinness, wasn’t his sister in male form but a stranger she’d married under false pretenses. Olivia couldn’t visit Viola and Orsino without looking at Viola and thinking _I thought I married you_. It made her feel small and stupid and a little sick inside. 

Sebastian was no happier in marriage than she, but he was glad for the chance to explore Thrace even if Olivia was his only available and suitable travel companion. He hadn’t warmed up to Illyria, felt as if he couldn’t fully wake up there, couldn’t brush past the membrane of a dream to see clearly the trappings of his new life. They’d talked about it some, not like husband and wife but like strangers in a bar, throwing away their life stories on a one-night acquaintance that kept going day after day. Sebastian hoped to see Messaline again, afraid it would go to pieces without him, but he wouldn’t risk the vast waters, himself on one shore and Viola on another. When he received a letter from a long-lost cousin who’d settled in eastern Thrace, he jumped at the chance to find more family, to talk with someone else who knew Messaline. 

The journey would last about a week. Olivia covered up her beige clothes with a thick fur coat, tried to skip from daydreams into sleep during the long drafty carriage rides. Late in the afternoon on the second day, the driver stopped their horses in front of an inn called the Antler & Arms just as the fickle January sun started to fall in earnest. Sebastian leapt from the carriage, offered Olivia his arm for the dismount. 

The lobby was a flurry of check-ins and luggage and preparation for—Olivia had nearly forgotten—what was surely tonight’s Twelfth Night feast. The doors to the dining room were propped open, and cooks carried platters of food to a long table at the front, shouting and sniping at each other as they maneuvered. Olivia was tired just thinking about attending a party with a room full of strangers. Twelfth Night was about class slippage and wasn’t it enough that Olivia was pretending at nobodyness today? It took very little effort. 

When it was their turn to check in, the desk clerk moved quickly, and before they knew it Sebastian held a great brass key and their luggage had gone on ahead of them, carried by a rosy-cheeked bellboy. “Our concierge would be happy to tell you about this evening’s Twelfth Night festivities,” the clerk said. “All guests invited.” He gestured to a small desk to his right.

He gestured to _Malvolia_. 

Olivia lowered her head against the shock but just as quickly made herself look again, and yes, the concierge at the Antler & Arms was none other than her former steward. It was obvious Malvolia had seen her long before Olivia saw her; her complexion was chalky, her eyes a tunneled dark. 

“Hello,” Sebastian said pleasantly, approaching Malvolia’s desk. He didn’t recognize her, Olivia realized. She could have been anyone. “Does the banquet cost extra?”

“No, sir,” said Malvolia. “It’s complimentary.” She looked at Olivia again, and her expression changed slightly, made room for a question: _He doesn’t know me?_

Olivia shook her head no, the movement slight. _Keep it that way._ She didn’t want Sebastian to make the connection. It was too much to explain, too much to unravel. He wasn’t—this was the truth—he wasn’t worth this story. 

The last time Olivia looked at Malvolia, her eyes were so wounded they seemed bruised. There was something different about them today. She didn’t appear older, exactly—if anything Malvolia looked younger now—but her gaze held something made up of everything she must have seen since she left Illyria. In fact, Malvolia was different all around: she’d kept the short hair she’d revealed that awful, wondrous night, and she wore a sharp suit that fit her very well. 

“Do let me know if there’s anything we can do for you,” Malvolia said, directing her comments to Sebastian. “And the feasting begins in only an hour.” She nodded at Olivia, and Olivia nodded back. It was marvelous, Olivia thought, to communicate with Malvolia so easily. They’d not exchanged a word, but there was understanding. Back at home, Olivia supposed she’d spent quite a lot of time with her, but they spoke almost entirely of business, their conversation structured by their stations: mournful employer, humorless employee. In the months since, Olivia barely thought about those old structures, focused instead on the awful day Malvolia’s deeper desires unraveled. _I know her_ , Olivia thought, half questioning, and wondered if it went both ways.

-

If the lobby was crowded when Olivia and Sebastian checked in, that was nothing compared to the dining hall at the height of feasting. In addition to the guests and staff, a number of the town’s citizens had chosen the Antler & Arms as the place to spend their feast night, and the tables along the perimeter of the room were full. Carolers stood at the center and sang throughout the meal and the cutting of the Twelfth Night cake. 

As slices of cake made their way down the rows of feasters, Olivia tried to focus on Sebastian and the guests sitting nearby, whom he’d befriended even before the cooks served the first course. But she couldn’t take her eyes off Malvolia, who sat amongst the other front-of-house staff and appeared to say very little. She was, Olivia assumed, doing everything in her power to avoid looking back at her.

The cake was decent—good crumb, a strong-spiced flavor. It was delicious enough that Olivia forgot about the cake’s traditional use until the innkeeper Destino, whose name she knew because he’d delivered a bombastic welcome address, yelled “Ho-ho! We’ve found our king! She’s dressed for it, anyway, though she’ll need a crown.” 

Olivia looked up in time to see him punch Malvolia in the shoulder, Malvolia glaring at the bean in her hand. Destino turned to the buffet table just behind him and grabbed the larger of the two paper crowns from its surface. Malvolia kept the glower on her face while Destino’s back was turned and glowered deeper still when he thrust the crown atop her head with little ceremony. The crown was too big, and Malvolia had to tilt her head a little to keep it on. “Go, go,” Destino said, gesturing to the two empty seats at the head table. “Sit there and await your queen.”

When Olivia chewed her next bite, her teeth landed on something small and solid. She reached into her mouth, pulled out an uncooked pea with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh,” she said, looking at it, and before she could stop him Sebastian grabbed her wrist and thrust her hand in the air. 

“Our queen!” he shouted, more spirited than she’d ever heard him sound. 

Destino rushed her with the second crown, and gestured for her to take her place at the front of the room. The room echoed with cheers and shouts, and she almost didn’t stop when a red-haired woman patted her arm as she passed her table. “Hey,” the woman said, trying again, and Olivia paused. “Watch out for King Malvolia,” the woman said with a smirk. “She’s a real libertine.” 

“If you’re lucky,” said the woman’s friend, dissolving into giggles.

There wasn’t time to make sense of it. Malvolia wasn’t a hedonist—she was so puritanical, rigid and sour. _Well_ , Olivia thought. _Not always_. 

The din of applause swelled when Olivia took her throne, which was little more than a dining room chair. But it was an improvement upon the bench seating she’d just left, and although the moment was painful—this new year, so far, was painful as the last—Olivia felt curious about her own life for the first time in weeks. The applause died, but the noisiness of the room didn’t. Olivia gave the hall a close-mouthed smile and a limp wave before forcing herself to turn toward Malvolia, who stared at the empty table before her. 

“Does your husband recognize _you_?” Malvolia said. She didn’t look up.

“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“Mm.” 

The briefness of the syllable reminded her: Malvolia wasn’t an employee anymore. She could say what she liked. They both could. During the meal the noise filling the dining hall had rattled Olivia’s head, left her feeling faraway and eager for quiet. But now it was like a blanket that could shield her and Malvolia from the rest of the world, give them a chance to talk so long as they could find a balance between speaking loud enough to hear each other and screaming.

“So,” Olivia said. “Do you enjoy working here? It seems—very nice.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Malvolia said, hating every word although each seemed true.

“We’ve not found anyone who can manage the books half as well as you.” Olivia cringed. “But I’m glad for you, I’m glad you’re here—”

“What choice did I have?”

Olivia sighed. Her insides trembled. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Truly. I—I didn’t know, and it was awful, and—I apologize.” Playful contrition was never her style. The real thing felt even worse. 

Malvolia of Illyria might have bowed her head, folded her hands with measured symbolism, spoken bitter medicine. But this Malvolia simply glanced at the far end of the room. “You didn’t know,” she agreed. 

Olivia tried for a smile and tossed her head in the direction of the women who’d given her the joking warning about the nature of her new king. “Those ladies sang your praises,” she said. “So to speak.” 

“I’m known here,” Malvolia sneered, turning to face Olivia. “I won’t explain it to you.” There was something about her—not animal, not brutal, but a little wild. The perfect suit not a cage but a reminder of her body. 

“You don’t have to. I understand.” Just as she often thought of Viola, Olivia thought of Viola now. Olivia missed the rasp in her voice, the smile which betrayed both perplexity and mirthful confidence. Viola was a girl the whole time, even in trousers, trying so hard—or had she been trying?—to affect a boyish stance. It was obvious. It wasn’t confusing, and that was most terrifying at all. 

“You,” Malvolia said, voice full of unlaughed laughter. “You understand.” 

“Well. Yes.” Olivia cleared her throat. Malvolia was the only woman she knew who was like this, and this fleeting chance to approach the subject felt like an itch she was in danger of not scratching. It would fester; it would bother her forever. “Viola seems very happy in Illyria. You know, Viola? Cesario? The boy I made you chase for me?”

“You didn’t make me.”

“Yes, I did!” In hindsight, it was a cruel thing to do. “I made you, and—and Viola’s very happy with the Duke. She dresses beautifully, and she found love, and she got her brother back, and I—” She could cry. “I thought I married her. Cesario. Viola.” 

Malvolia’s face changed. She’d always had an exceedingly theatrical face. She performed everything from obedience to disdain. But now her face was quiet. She’d listened. 

“Malvolia,” Olivia said. She wouldn’t cry, not at the head of the table, cheap crown on her head. “What I mean is—I know how it feels.” Or something similar, she reminded herself. “I married her brother. I wish I hadn’t.” 

“Are you—”

“Sebastian and I got drunk and talked about annulment once.” Malvolia rolled her eyes, but Olivia kept going. “After this journey—we’re meeting his cousin in east of bloody nowhere Thrace—we’ll evaluate further. I think. I mean, we both feel rather embarrassed about the whole thing.”

“You don’t want to be married to him?” Malvolia said, as if to confirm. 

Olivia checked Malvolia’s eyes for hope. Saw none. She’d asked a leading question, but it wasn’t an attempt to lead Olivia to her. “No,” Olivia said. “I like him, really, but Sebastian doesn’t have Viola’s...bounce. Her humor. And I—I haven’t lived the best life, but—” Olivia felt herself veer very close to going over-the-top, though she meant each word. “I think I deserve to be with someone who loves me as I love, um, her.” She heaved a breath. “You deserve that too, Malvolia. We all do.” Malvolia the libertine, but who might hold her at the end of the day? What happiness might end this wretched new year?

Malvolia’s breath caught. It was too loud in the hall to hear the intake of air, but Olivia watched it happen. In no time at all, the moment passed. Malvolia frowned. “It’d take, what, four more days for him to reach his cousin?”

Olivia nodded. “Or five.”

“And he’ll want to spend some weeks there?”

Malvolia had already separated Sebastian from Olivia. “Yes, he’ll want,” Olivia said.

“And four days back, then. Or five.” She smiled, sad around the eyes. Already tired. “Olivia, you don’t want to explore Thrace with a man who bores you. Stay here, at the A ‘n’ A.”

“I couldn’t—” 

“There are some interesting women in this town.” 

The hall had started to empty out, the complacent roar of carousing replaced with the echo of shouted goodbyes. Sebastian stood at the far end, still in conversation. 

“Tell him what you want,” Malvolia said very quietly. “He won’t make you leave.” 

Olivia was almost lightheaded with the possibility. At least a month with a room to herself. With streets to walk alone. Or with interesting women. And with Malvolia, who understood, who might become a friend. At least a month without pretending, without having to suffer any of the people she’d known before. Because she hadn’t known Malvolia then, had she? Was a month long enough to know herself? She stood up and plucked the crown off her head, and Malvolia did the same. “Our reign comes crashing to an end,” Olivia said, and it elicited half a smile. “Will you find, um, an interesting woman?” 

“Not tonight.” 

Olivia caught Sebastian’s eye, held up a finger to entreat him to wait. “I’ll talk to him,” she whispered. Her stomach twisted. Terrible idea, it warned. Exciting idea. Life-wrecking, life-saving. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” said Malvolia. She stood still and gave Olivia time to make her exit.


End file.
